CONTENTS

3. WORK 4.0
3.1. THE IMPETUS TO WORK
3.2. WHAT IS WORK 4.0?
3.2.1. DISSOLUTION OF ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES
3.2.2. THE DIGITAL NETWORK ECONOMY

4. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

5. BIBLIOGRAPHY

5.1. BOOKS AND JOURNALS

5.2. INTERNET SOURCES

i. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

“Most long-range forecasts of what is technically feasible in future time periods dramatically underestimate the power of future developments because they are based on what I call the ‘intuitive linear’ view of history rather than the ‘historical exponential’ view.”

>> Ray Kurzweil, American author, computer scientist, inventor and futurist, The Singularity is Near (2004) <<

Work achieves things, makes sense to some and none to others and gives life a purpose. What are the roots of work in an industrialized civilization and what will it be like tomorrow? Work environments have never been changing as quick as they are right now. Does technology play a decisive role? And what should people be prepared for in the future?

These questions will be clarified in this business report; the products and services mentioned are no covert advertising, but serve as examples.

1. INTRODUCTION

This business report is written by an International Business student of the second semester at the University of Applied Sciences in Dresden.

It aims to extract the general orientation of the labour market and in which areas individuals should expect changes in the future.

A variety of books and surveys from the last years inspired the research process and were helpful to delve into the topic.

The following findings include but are not limited to trends in Germany, the European Union and the rest of the world. At the beginning there is a short review of important historic inventions, after that the contemporary situation, the role of machines and their effect on people’s workday are highlighted.

The results of this investigation are just an outline for general information and do not respond to every economical and sociological question that may arise, but focuses especially on technological development.

2. ECONOMIC CHANGE

2.1. A RETROSPECTIVE VIEW

Since the 18th century, economy has developed exceedingly and brought progress to systems and mechanisms in industry and society. It started with the introduction of mechanic production plants driven by water and steam power, as to mention the first loom that was patented in 1785. Almost one hundred years later, in 1870, abattoirs of Cincinnati began mass fabrication based on the division of labour with assembly lines by means of electrical power. The third great industrial innovation was the programmable logic controller (PLC) Modicon 084 in 1969, which stimulated the advancement in enterprise automation by robotics and information technologies.1

2.2. THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

New production and logistic chains, products and services have to be established in order to bring economic growth as the current so called fourth industrial revolution turns upside down entire sectors.2 In these days the digital transformation urged by Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) revolutionizes traditional business models.3

Entire networks are enabled to regulate themselves via virtual webs (see fig. 1), in contrast to traditional networked control schemes where information was simply routed to and from a dedicated controller.

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Fig. 1: Wireless Cyber-Physical Systems

Source: www.people.duke.edu/~mp275/research.html

Two important driving forces for change in today’s working environment are presented below.

2.2.1. MACHINES LEARN TO THINK

Due to enhancing fine and gross motor skills of robots and devices and their meliorating abilities to recognize their environment for safe navigation on concrete structures, interaction between the virtual and physical world has been made possible. Additionally listening comprehension and speaking abilities keep progressing.

Voice recognition, natural language processing and the active use of vocabulary, written and spoken, have led to software programmes such as Siri, Microsoft Cortana and Narrative Science; essential elements of mobile technology.456 Taking advantage of a strong nexus of rulebased analysis, pattern recognition, and classification, innovations as for example Google’s Self-Driving Car Project and IBM’s Artificial Intelligence Watson are quantum jumps for future development solving problems by answering unstructured questions.78

2.2.2. INTELLIGENT MACHINES BECOME OMNIPRESENT

It is to highlight that industrial robots (IR) as well as mobile devices gain importance and remodel our everyday life as they become an integral part of modern economy and society. For instance, the Amazon warehouse tool “Kiva”, the agile anthropomorphic “Atlas”, and the smart, collaborative “Baxter” are IRs that have already been integrated into the workforce of different leading companies worldwide.91011 Referring specifically to the succeeding graph (see fig. 2), it is illustrated that the number of IRs will continue to rise until 2018.